


Sympathy for the Darksider

by radioactivesaltghoul



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Author Knows Nothing About Ship Repair, Canon Compliant, Finn/Poe mention, Fluff, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-15 04:43:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18491599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radioactivesaltghoul/pseuds/radioactivesaltghoul
Summary: If you had told Rose Tico six months ago that she’d be up to her elbows in engine wiring with the former Supreme Leader of the First Order on one side of her and the last Jedi on the other, she’d have laughed so hard she cried.





	Sympathy for the Darksider

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of the Star Wars Rare Ship April 2019 challenge. Prompt: [Sympathy For The Devil](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SympathyForTheDevil) via tvtropes. This was a fun one to write :)
> 
> I know nothing about engine repair (GFFA engines or real-life engines), so forgive any liberties I’m taking here.

The first time Rose met Ben Solo, they were on opposite sides of a jail cell.

Three weeks earlier, Rey had woken Rose up in the middle of the night to tell her that there was something she had to do, someplace she had to go. “I’m not abandoning you, I promise,” she’d whispered. “I’ll explain everything when I get back.” She’d kissed Rose’s cheek, and then sneaked off in a borrowed ship. The General knew where she was going, but other than that, Rey’s mission was top-secret.

When she’d returned last night, she’d had a tall, dark-haired man with a scar running down the side of his face accompanying her. He’d been wearing a look that Rose would have described as ‘extremely apprehensive,’ and it only grew stronger when he and General Organa had locked eyes from across the hangar. The three of them had disappeared into her office and stayed there for hours, with various other high-ranking Resistance members coming and going.

Rumors started flying within an hour of their arrival, everything from _He’s a new pilot joining up with us_ to _He’s another stormtrooper defecting from the First Order at great personal risk._ Finn had argued against the second one with a certainty that suggested that he knew the identity of the mystery man, but he kept his mouth shut. Eventually, he’d been called into the General’s office as well.

It was late into the night cycle when Rey finally emerged from whatever top secret meetings they’d been having. Rose had been...well, she hadn’t been _waiting up_ , strictly speaking, but she’d been dawdling in the dining hall, knowing that food would be Rey’s first stop after leaving the General’s office. Rey’s face had lit up upon spotting Rose, who was cleaning a table as an excuse to wait around. “I promised I wasn’t abandoning you,” she’d whispered as Rose wrapped her arms around her.

Now, Rose knew that the identity of the mystery man was Ben Solo, formerly known as Kylo Ren. Rose still didn’t quite understand Rey’s garbled explanation—something about being bound in the Force—but she believed her when she said that he’d defected from the First Order, leaving chaos in his wake. “It’s a long story,” Rey had said the previous night, yawning as she curled up next to Rose in her bunk. “But he’s on our side now. I promise.”

Rose wasn’t quite sure that she was allowed to be back here in the makeshift jail, but Rey had asked her to come, and Rose couldn’t deny that she was curious about the former Supreme Leader of the First Order. She only grew more curious when he took one look at her and said, “You’re Rose,” like that was the answer to a question he’d been asking.

She’d heard that he was capable of breaking into someone’s mind to steal information from them, but from what Poe had told her, it was an invasive process. This didn’t feel like anyone was digging through her mind. It sounded like recognition. Had Rey told him about her? The thought made her cheeks heat.

 

* * *

 

Having spent so much time listening to Finn talk about Rey, Rose wasn’t sure what to expect when actually meeting the mysterious Force-sensitive who was remarkable enough to make him want to abandon the Resistance in order to keep her out of harm’s way.

Things were hazy for Rose when she woke up on an unfamiliar ship after the escape from Crait. The last thing she remembered was something about a speeder crash, and... _Oh my stars, I professed my love for Finn and kissed him._ The memory made blood rush to her cheeks. She hadn’t even seen his reaction before losing consciousness. He must have dragged her to safety, though, so he didn’t hate her for it. Right?

She stirred, attempting to push herself into a sitting position. “She’s awake,” she heard someone say. There was a rustling as someone hurried to the bench she’d been laying on, and she looked up to see Finn’s worried face. “Thank the stars,” he breathed. “How do you feel?”

“Where are we?” They weren’t on Crait. Rose could tell that much.

“Somewhere in the Outer Rim,” he said. “We’re on the _Millennium Falcon_.”

“Whoa,” was all that Rose was able to say to that. If they were on the _Millennium Falcon,_ that meant that the mysterious Rey had returned, right?

“We’re safe,” Finn assured her. “Well, as safe as it’s possible for us to be right now, anyway.” He let out a breath. “But you should rest. You, uh,” he murmured, turning red. “You got pretty badly hurt when you saved my life.”

Rose fell back asleep after that, and when she woke up, a young woman with hazel eyes and hair pulled back into three buns was hovering over her. “Oh,” the woman said, meeting Rose’s eyes. “You’re awake.” She sat back, putting some distance between herself and Rose. “How do you feel?”

“My head hurts less than it did the last time I woke up,” Rose said, wondering how rude it was to say, _Sorry, but who are you?_

She got her answer a moment later when the woman said, “I wanted to try Force healing on you, but I’m not quite sure how it works, and I don’t want to hurt you even more.”

Force healing. That could only mean...“You’re Rey,” Rose whispered.

Rey’s lips quirked up in a small smile. “I am,” she said. “And you’re Rose. Finn told me you saved his life.”

“He saved mine, too.” Now that she had a face to match the name, Rose couldn’t resist letting her eyes wander over Rey’s face, taking her in. Even covered in what appeared to be scorch marks and engine grease, she was pretty. All hazel eyes, freckles, and hair pulled back in a style Rose had never seen before. And was it her imagination, or did Rey emanate an aura of power and mystery? After all that time Finn had spent talking about her, it was difficult to know if Rose was just projecting her assumptions about Force-sensitives on her or not.

“He’s good like that,” Rey said softly.

“Yes,” Rose said, her cheeks heating again as she thought about her last words to Finn before passing out on Crait. “He is.”

 

* * *

 

Rose and Finn quickly figured out that their feelings for each other were mostly born of adrenaline and the kind of bond you form with someone after a life-threatening mission to save the rest of your friends and fellow fighters.

Not that it was really possible to _date_ someone while scrambling to build your crew back up in the middle of a war, but they spent as much time together as possible before realizing that they didn’t actually have romantic feelings for each other. It was a relief to Rose when they finally decided to end their quasi-relationship. The kissing had been nice enough, but she didn’t feel much of a spark.

Also, she was pretty sure that Finn and Poe had a thing for each other, and she didn’t want to get in the way of that.

Spending time with Finn meant that she and Rey spent a lot of time together as well, since the two of them had made their way off of Jakku and into the Resistance together. And then it turned out that in addition to being strong in the Force, Rey knew her way around every piece of tech the Resistance threw her way, so when they were finally able to start building their fleet up again after finding an old, abandoned settlement on Ozu, she and Rose spent a lot of time working on the broken and battered ships they’d been able to recover from junkyards and old Rebellion bases.

Eventually, Finn started going off on missions, which meant that he spent less time at the base, leaving the two of them alone together. And Rose and Rey, well…

Later on, Rose would be able to say that she fell in love with Rey the day she watched her cobble together a speeder out of broken ship parts that were about to be thrown out with the rest of the garbage. It wasn’t so much the fact that Rey could make an entire machine out of junk so much as the way she went about it so confidently, picking through the discarded parts to find exactly what she needed. And then there was the sheer delight on her face when she’d built something that worked, and the way she flushed when Rose expressed her admiration for the machine she’d built out of scrap.

That was the day that Rose began to pay a lot more attention to the Jedi.

Rey was shy, most likely due to the fact that she’d spent the majority of her life alone in the desert. She liked to take her meals at times when the dining hall was emptier, often taking food and sneaking back into the hangar to eat alone, out of the way of everyone else.

She never turned down food, no matter how unappetizing it was. “I didn’t always have enough to eat on Jakku,” she explained to Rose one day. “I could never turn down sustenance simply because it didn’t taste good.” Like Rey, Rose was an orphan, and they began sharing stories about their earlier lives as they worked together on the Resistance’s fleet.

There was one thing that Rose wasn’t sure how to ask her friend about. Sometimes, Rey would stop in the middle of a sentence and look up, like she was seeing something that no one else could see. Rose swore that she walked in on Rey talking to herself a few times. And then there were the old books that Rey spent hours poring over alone, the broken halves of a lightsaber sitting next to her.

It wasn’t until the day that Rey showed up with Ben Solo in tow that Rose began to understand.

 

* * *

 

In the end, the Resistance leadership didn’t keep Ben in the jail cell for long. He was under constant scrutiny, and even though his identity wasn’t explicitly announced by the Resistance leadership, everyone seemed to have some idea of who he was and what he’d done.

The thing that seemed to baffle everyone the most was the way that Rey, the resident Jedi and hero, seemed to trust him. Even the General, his own _mother_ , was wary of him at first. He was to be kept under constant surveillance, which more or less meant that he followed Rey around everywhere, since she was more than capable of taking him in a fight. The scar on his face was a very raw reminder of that. And because he spent almost all of his time with Rey, he spent a lot of time with Rose as well.

Rose would have been lying if she’d said that she wasn’t afraid of Ben at first. Like Rey, he seemed to emanate power, although Rose may have only thought that because of everything Finn had told her about him. “We watched him kill his own father,” Finn murmured to Rose over dinner one night. “Which was right _after_ he kidnapped her and right _before_ he tried to kill both of us. I don’t know how Rey can just forgive him for that.”

It didn’t seem like simple forgiveness to Rose. There was something cautious and heartbroken about the way that she caught Rey looking at him sometimes. The most she’d ever said about him to Rose was “I trust him, and his story is not mine to tell,” which only increased Rose’s curiosity about Ben Solo.

And she _was_ interested in him, to tell the truth. As terrifying as he was, he was also oddly docile. She supposed that was because he knew that one wrong move would result in his permanent imprisonment, no matter how much Rey and General Organa vouched for him. Despite all of the terrible things he’d done, he really did seem to want to help the Resistance. It wasn’t until the day that Rose found herself working on a ship with him without Rey around as a buffer that Rose realized something big: if Rey trusted him, then Rose did. Because she trusted the Jedi’s judgement without question.

Maybe love was making her stupid. But when she was working on ship repairs by Rey’s side, Rose didn’t have it in her to care.

 

* * *

 

There was another turning point in Rose’s feelings about Ben Solo.

About three months after his defection from the First Order, the three of them were working on the same ship in the hangar. It was in the middle of the hottest season on the base, and it was nearly forty degrees in the hangar. They’d all stripped down to the lightest clothing they had. Rey seemed to be faring better than Rose and Ben were, but even she was covered in a thin sheen of sweat within half an hour of starting work.

The heat was distracting for multiple reasons. The sweat was making Rose’s shirt stick to her body, and the tools kept slipping out of her hands. Normally, doing the work she loved so much kept her energized, but she found herself yawning, wondering if she could get away with taking a nap in the coolest part of the hangar.

The most distracting reason of all, however, was the way the beads of sweat rolled down Rey’s neck and disappeared down the thin, revealing, lightweight undershirt that she’d stripped down to. Even though it was nearly too hot to think about touching another human being, Rose found herself wanting to lick the exposed skin, wondering what Rey tasted like.

Sometimes, she got the sense that Rey felt the same. They’d shared more than a few lingering touches when handing each other tools, and more often than not, they sought each other out at mealtimes, whether or not their mutual friends were around. There was a comfort level they shared that Rey didn’t seem to have with anyone else, even Finn.

Well. Maybe she shared it with Ben. Rose had once walked in on them in the midst of a whispered conversation they were having while sitting in the cockpit of a ship the three of them had been working on earlier. They were so wrapped up in each other that neither of them noticed Rose at first, which was strange for the normally paranoid Force-sensitives. They’d been facing each other, holding hands as they leaned into each other, and even though Rose couldn’t make out any of the words, she could tell that this was the sort of conversation she had no place in. She’d backed away slowly and busied herself with a repair on another ship until they’d rejoined her with no sign that they’d just been locked in an intensely private conversation.

The whole scene had filled Rose with some...confusing feelings. By that point, she’d stopped feeling on-edge about the way Ben trailed Rey everywhere, even though she wasn’t quite at the point where she was comfortable working with him when Rey wasn’t around. Rose still wasn’t quite sure that the former Supreme Leader of the First Order deserved the amount of sympathy that Rey seemed to have for him, but she loved the way Rey was trying to normalize his place with the Resistance. It was the way she stubbornly refused to back down, and even though she never excused his past mistakes, it was clear that she didn’t think he deserved to be locked away in a jail cell for the rest of his life.

So even though Rose felt stung at the knowledge that Rey shared something with Ben that Rose couldn’t be a part of, there was something tender about the way the two of them fit together. And that filled Rose with something soft and affectionate that she didn’t quite understand.

“Rose,” Rey said, pulling her out of her musings. “Can you hand me the sonic screwdriver?” She was standing on a stepladder, leaning over the hull of the ship they were cleaning. Her waist was about at Rose’s height and when she leaned down to take the screwdriver from Rose, the angle nearly allowed Rose to see straight down the front of her shirt. She ripped her gaze away from Rey, who didn’t seem to notice anything amiss with the awkward way Rose handed her the tool without looking at her. For some inexplicable reason, Rose’s eyes settled on Ben, who was standing on the other side of Rey. The look on his face as he watched Rey straighten back up and resume her work on the ship, it…

Rose recognized that look. She understood it. Because it was the same look she’d just been giving Rey.

She would never know if Ben looked away from Rey because he thought he wasn’t supposed to be looking at her like that, or if he looked away because he sensed Rose’s gaze on him. But as he and Rose locked eyes, she knew exactly what was passing between them at that moment: _I see you. I understand. You care for her just as much as I do._ And for the first time, Rose truly felt sympathy for the darksider.

 

* * *

 

Rey was one of the few people Rose felt comfortable talking to about Paige. There had been a service commemorating the members who had been lost in between the evacuation from D’Qar and the flight from Crait once the Resistance had found a base to settle on for a little while, but publicly mourning the loss of so many people wasn’t the same as mourning Paige so intensely that Rose thought the grief would consume her. Even though Rey didn’t have the personal connection to the people they’d lost that Rose had, and even though she had her own thing she was mourning that she wouldn’t speak about, she never made Rose feel selfish for needing time to mourn and cry over the loss of the one person in the galaxy who Rose had never imagined losing.

“I feel so alone without Paige,” Rose said.

She didn’t know how to interpret the look on Rey’s face, nor did she quite understand her response. “I’m going to tell you something someone once told me,” she murmured, wiping away Rose’s tears. “You’re not alone.” As much as Rose appreciated the sentiment—and oh, she did, and she didn’t think she’d ever find the words to express how much she did—she got the sense that the words meant something else to Rey. And she wondered if the person Rey was talking about was the same reason Rey was mourning a loss of her own that she never talked about.

 

* * *

 

There was a noticeable shift between the three of them after that day in the hangar, when Rose and Ben had understood each other. It was unclear whether or not Rey noticed, but Rose sure as hell did. For the first time, Rose found herself hoping that Rey would leave her alone with Ben for a while. The two of them had something to discuss, and like hell they were going to discuss their shared feelings for Rey while she was within earshot.

They finally got their chance a couple of weeks later, when Rey was sent off on an overnight supply run to another settlement on Ozu. Enough people seemed to be convinced that Ben could be trusted not to turn and murder everyone at that point, and Rey seemed grateful for the excuse to get off of the base for a little while.

Ben and Rose worked in silence for the first hour of their shift, neither of them willing to be the one to acknowledge the bantha in the room. He was the first one to break the silence by asking Rose to bring him a hydrospanner. Instead of handing it to him in silence and returning to the repair she was working on, she sat down next to him and said, “So.”

He paused, hydrospanner halfway to the engine. “Yes?”

_For someone so big and dangerous,_ Rose thought, _he sure can speak quietly sometimes._ “About Rey.” When he didn’t respond, she whispered, “Let’s not pretend that we don’t feel the same way about her.”

He lowered the tool. “Are we really going to discuss this?”

“Does she know how you feel?” The words were out of her mouth before she realized how invasive they were.

Ben hesitated. “How much has she told you?”

“She told me that you two are bonded in the Force,” Rose said, “but I don’t know what that means. She didn’t explain, and I didn’t ask.”

He sighed and looked down at the hydrospanner he was holding. “I don’t know how to explain it to someone who isn’t Force-sensitive.” Rose bristled at the condescension in his voice. “Hell, I don’t even know how to explain it to someone who _is_ Force-sensitive. What we have, it’s...unique.” If he had been anyone else, Rose would have poked fun at him for the dreamy tone in his voice. He seemed to catch himself a moment later when he looked up at her. “I would never intentionally do anything to hurt her,” he said firmly.

“I know.” Ben seemed surprised at the certainty in Rose’s tone. “And for the record, I would fight you for her honor if you did.”

The resulting smile on his face made her stomach flutter in a way that didn’t have anything to do with the fact that she was threatening one of the most powerful Force-sensitives in history. “Even though you’d lose?”

“I’m pretty good with an electro-shock prod. Ask Finn.”

He snorted. “I’d offer to train you if I didn’t think that being seen fighting you would be signing my own death warrant.”

The comment took Rose by surprise. “Really?”

“Rey is more than capable of defending herself,” he said, “but it doesn’t hurt for her to be surrounded by people who can fight by her side.” His expression softened when he added, “She really cares about you, you know. Rey never said anything when we were planning my...departure from the First Order,” he explained, “but I knew there was someone else. And the moment I saw you, I knew it was you.”

 

* * *

 

When Rey returned from the supply run the next day, she took one look at Rose and Ben working side-by-side and gave them both the biggest, most beautiful smile Rose had ever seen.

 

* * *

 

At some point, Rose became aware that there was a new tension between her and Ben.

There was one day where Rose and Rey got caught in a sudden rainstorm. They’d sprinted back in the direction of the hangar, but they were completely drenched by the time they reached cover. Their clothes clung to their bodies, leaving little to the imagination. Rose hated the feeling of cold, sodden fabric being plastered to her body, but Rey was laughing as she wrung her hair out. “That,” she said to Ben as he handed them towels, “will never cease to be amazing to me.”

“I know,” he said, smiling at her. Rose got the sense that he was referring to something she hadn’t been present for. His expression turned to shock a moment later when Rey shucked off her wet shirt, leaving her in her undergarments and leggings.

_Kriff._ There was no way that Rey wasn’t aware of the way Rose and Ben were looking at her. “Probably shouldn’t drip water all over the base while I go get dry clothing,” she said, wrapping the towel around her torso.

Ben was frozen in place. Even though Rose was having the same reaction (and therefore was in no position to judge), she found it amusing, and she couldn’t resist the urge to tease him. She peeled off her own sodden outer layer, feeling like Rey had been much more graceful about it than Rose was. “Right,” she said to Rey, praying that she sounded cooler than she felt. “Good point.” She sneaked a look at Ben, who was now looking her up and down. Something about his gaze made her cheeks heat, and she felt that same tension low in her belly that she normally associated with Rey.

“Come on,” Rey said, picking up her discarded shirt. “Let’s go find dry clothing before too many people spot us wandering around wrapped in towels.”

“That was mean,” Ben whispered to Rose later on, once she and Rey had returned fully clothed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied, trying to hold back a grin.

He shook his head and muttered something under his breath. She didn’t catch the words he said, but she did catch the smile on his face.

 

* * *

 

Ben got his revenge in the least subtle way possible three days later, when he spilled engine grease all over himself. “Whoops,” he said, making eye contact with Rose as he pulled his shirt off. “Better go wash this out.”

Rose had known that he was built—she’d spent enough time trying not to stare at his bare arms as he carried heavy ship parts around the hangar by that point—but it was one thing to know, and another to actually _see_ the wall of pale muscle that made up Ben Solo’s torso. She noted that the scar on his face extended down his chest. Had Rey seen how big of a mark she’d left on him?

Judging from the laughter Rose heard ringing out from her, it wasn’t news. “Still no cowl?” she called after him.

In response, he waved a hand and Force-dump engine grease over Rey without turning around to see what he was doing. And a moment later, he did the same to Rose.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t know how you can stand working with him all day,” Finn said to Rose one evening as they ate a late dinner together. Rey and Ben had eaten earlier, but Rose had stayed behind to finish the repair she’d been working on.

Rose wasn’t sure how to answer that. “He’s good with his hands,” she said, turning red as she belatedly realized how the words could be interpreted. “He’s never told me where he learned so much about engine repair,” she added, praying that Finn wouldn’t ask about the blush now staining her cheeks. “He doesn’t talk much about his past.” _Not with me, anyway._

Except...well, that wasn’t strictly true, was it? True, he never spoke about his family, or about his reasons for joining the First Order, but he’d shared some stories with Rose. Mostly small things, like the time he burned his eyebrows off doing an engine modification on his TIE silencer that backfired. (Literally. “I was more careful about wearing the helmet after that,” he’d said, a little tense at the mention of his former role with the First Order.) She liked the way he trusted her enough to share these small things about his past. And, in return, she told him stories of her exploits with Paige, both before and after joining up with the Resistance.

Finn raised an eyebrow. Rose could tell that he still didn’t believe her. “Rey trusts him,” she said. “And so do I.”

“I can’t deny that his defection has helped us,” Finn said after a pause. It was true: even though the Resistance was still headquartered on Ozu, more and more systems had declared their support of General Organa’s cause. The First Order still hadn’t fully recovered from the damage Ben had done before leaving, giving the Resistance and their allies plenty of opportunity to get ahead. “And if a stormtrooper can recognize that the First Order is fighting for the wrong side,” Finn added quietly, “I suppose Kylo Ren can, too.”

 

* * *

 

Rose’s small size often meant that she could squeeze into spaces that other adult humans and humanoids couldn’t. It was an asset in many aspects of engine repair.

When it came to taking tools off of high shelves, however, it was a clear disadvantage. “Ben?” she called, glaring at the shelf that was just barely out of reach.

“What?”

“I need you. Your height, I mean,” she added hastily. “Some asshole put the socket spanner on the top shelf.”

“That asshole was me,” he said, walking over to help her.

“Did you do it just to spite me?”

Rose was still glaring up at the offending shelf when he reached from behind her and pulled the spanner off of the shelf. She hadn’t heard his approaching footsteps, and she whirled around in surprise to find Ben standing so close, she could feel the heat radiating off his body. Later, she would be annoyed at how cliche the moment was, but she couldn’t deny that was what it was: a moment.

“I forgot how short you are,” he murmured.

Rose certainly hadn’t forgotten how tall _he_ was. He had nearly a third of a meter on her and despite the height distance, she couldn’t stop herself from wondering how it would feel to grab the collar of his jumpsuit and tug him down so that his lips down met hers. Judging by the way his gaze flickered to her lips, he was wondering the same thing.

Heart pounding, Rose leaned in just a little closer. “Well,” she said unsteadily. “Next time, don’t.”

He huffed a soft laugh. “Noted.”

They were closer to crossing the unspoken line they’d been dancing around ever since that day Rey had gone on a supply run. Would it be okay to cross that line right now, without her? Because Rose was growing more and more tempted by the second.

There was a sudden hiss as the door to the hangar opened, shattering the moment. Rose grabbed the tool from Ben’s hand at the exact moment he jumped back, causing their fingers to brush. Whereas the physical proximity had been exciting a moment before, now that they’d been interrupted, it just felt awkward.

 

* * *

 

That wasn’t the first almost-kiss Rose shared in the hangar.

A couple of months after they’d settled on Ozu—not long before Rey sneaked off in the middle of the night to go find Ben Solo—she and Rose were sitting in the engine room of an old freighter the Resistance had managed to their hands on. The mechanics were trying to figure out how to balance safety versus upgrades to make it war-ready, but the conversation had gone off track and now they were sitting side by side against the wall, tools scattered on the floor around them.

“Did you ever think you’d end up here?” Rose asked. At some point, she’d started leaning into Rey, and her head was now resting on Rey’s shoulder.

Rey didn’t reply immediately. “I spent most of my life telling myself that I had to stay on Jakku and wait for my parents to return,” she said quietly. “I was so focused on that, I never really considered what we’d do after that.”

Rose knew that Rey was an orphan, but the way she spoke about her parents was a little confusing. She’d been on her own since she was a young child, presumably because of her parents’ deaths, but up until the day BB-8 had rolled into her life, she’d been waiting for their return to Niima Outpost. “Do you regret it?” she asked, not completely sure what she was referring to.

“Which part?”

“Any of it.”

Rey’s shoulders rose in a shrug, gently jostling Rose. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t regret the part where it led to me meeting you."

Rose’s head whipped up so quickly that Rey didn’t have a chance to react. Only—no, that couldn’t be right. Her reflexes were supernatural, even without “proper Jedi training” (as Rey often put it). Rose had spent enough time watching her at this point to know that. She’d only have to lean in a few centimeters for their lips to meet. Somehow, this felt infinitely more nervewracking than deciding to drive a broken ski speeder into Finn’s to save him from his own attempt at heroics.

She had to say something. “I don’t regret meeting you, either,” she whispered, her eyes flicking down to Rey’s lips. The words didn’t quite seem to capture the message she was trying to relay, but Rey seemed to understand anyway.

They were close enough that Rose could feel Rey’s breath fanning across her lips. A shiver ran over Rey, and a second later, Rose’s comm beeped with a message from one of the commanders. “I need to take this,” she said, suddenly unable to meet Rey’s eyes. When she didn’t respond, Rose forced her gaze up to see Rey wearing that same faraway expression that she sometimes wore, like she was seeing something Rose couldn’t. “I’ll...see you later,” she said lamely, trying not to take it as a rejection.

A couple of days later, Rey sneaked into Rose’s quarters and kissed her cheek before whispering “I’m not abandoning you, I promise,” leaving Rose to wonder where they stood.

 

* * *

 

Rose was really, really sick of the tension stretching between her, Rey, and Ben these days. Ever since she and Ben had shared that _moment_ a week ago, she’d felt constantly antsy and on-edge, like she was waiting for the first drop of rain to fall in an oncoming storm. It didn’t help that she couldn’t sleep, her mind filled with thoughts of what the three of them could be doing after-hours, alone together.

She hadn’t been able to figure out if Ben and Rey were _together._ Surely one of them would have said something to her? Maybe she was just imagining the tension that existed between the three of them, and she was third-wheeling them both.

No. Even if things were tense between them, Rose trusted that at least one of them would have said something to her. She and Ben had long ago established that they both just wanted Rey to be happy, and there had never been any jealousy between them. Rey and Rose didn’t really discuss Ben, although they’d shared enough knowing looks that they were aware of the affection they both felt for him.

Still, something had to give soon. Rose just needed to find the right way to bring it up. _Soooo about how we’re all mutually attracted to each other._ Or maybe _I’ve almost kissed both of you in here; is it okay if we_ actually _kiss now?_

To Rey: _Ben and I have talked about it, and we’re both in love with you. Thoughts?_

To Ben: _I’m pretty sure that Rey is in love with you, and so am I. Should we say something to her?_

No, none of those words felt _right._ This was something important, and Rose didn’t want to mess it up.

She was walking through the hangar, making her way onto the ship the three of them had been working on that morning. There were murmurs that she recognized as Rey and Ben coming from the cockpit, and then silence as Rose approached. Had they sensed her approaching again? She was starting to get used to the creepy way they could do that. Kind of.

But then she turned the corner and realized that the silence had nothing to do with her and everything to do with the fact that they were kissing. Rey’s hands were tangled in Ben’s hair, and Ben’s hands were resting on her waist as he pulled her closer.

Rose was frozen in place. This was definitely the time to say something to them, and she had absolutely no words for the scene in front of her. It was half-arousing, half-alienating, and all-consuming.

It was unclear which of them noticed Rose first. Both, maybe. _Kriffing Force-sensitives._ They both jumped, but didn’t completely let go of each other. “Uh, hi,” Rose said. “Sorry, do you want me to—”

She was about to say _go_ , but both Rey and Ben reached out to take her by the hand and pull her closer to them. “No,” Rey said, tucking a strand of Rose’s hair behind her ear. “Stay. You’re a part of this, too.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> [How do they measure temperature in the GFFA?](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Temperature) (hint: 40 degrees Celsius is about 104 degrees Fahrenheit.)
> 
> [Sonic screwdrivers exist outside of Doctor Who, apparently](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sonic_screwdriver)  
>    
> [Ozu](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ozu)
> 
> [Electro-shock prod, aka Rose Tico's weapon of choice](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Electro-shock_prod)
> 
> [Socket spanner](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Socket_spanner)
> 
> [Ski speeder](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/V-4X-D_ski_speeder)
> 
> I'm on [ tumblr](https://radioactivesaltghoul.tumblr.com/). Feedback is appreciated; I've never written a non-linear narrative before.


End file.
